Somewhere else in northern climes (Copenhagen?), they're doing good advertising for public transit. I give it ****.

Article and blog, copyright Gavin Barrett 2008.

Click on the title of this article to view an excellent interactive map illustrating immigration and mother tongue data from the StatsCan report on the 2006 Census. (Courtesy the Canadian Press, via CBC.)

While checking it out, keep in mind this interesting fact from the 2006 Census: 93.6 per cent of Canadian immigrants can speak either English or French.

It tends to rather put things in perspective. Not such a tower of Babel, eh?

58.3 per cent of all immigrants came from Asia, including the Middle East.16.1 per cent came from Europe.10.8 per cent came from the Caribbean, and Central and South America.And 10.6 per cent hailed from Africa.

The foreign-born account for 19.8 per cent of Canada's population, the highest it has been in 75 years.Australia is the only country in the world with a higher percentage, with 22.2 per cent not born in Australia.The United States' foreign-born population by comparison is just 12.5 per cent.

More than 200 different ethnic origins were reported in the 2006 Census. 11 ethnic origins have grown beyond one million in population. The largest group was composed of the 10 million people who reported Canadian as their ethnic ancestry, either alone (5.7 million) or with other origins (4.3 million).

Approximately 5,068,100 belong to the visible minority population accounting for 16.2% of the total population of Canada.

Due to the increasing number of recent immigrants from non-European countries, the visible minority population grew faster than the total population. The visible minority population grew at a rate of 27.2%, five times faster than the total which only only grew at 5.4%.

75.0% of all immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006 belonged to a visible minority group.

South Asians are now Canada's largest visible minority group, surpassing the Chinese. Both groups are over one million.An estimated 1,262,900 individuals say they are South Asian, representing one-quarter (24.9%) of all visible minorities, or 4.0% of the total population in Canada. The Chinese accounted for 24.0% of the visible minority population and 3.9% of the total Canadian population. The chart above shows the composition of Canada's visible minorities - the numbers shown are percentages, rounded up.

In the census metropolitan area of Toronto, 42.9 per cent identified themselves as a visible minority and a total of 27.8 per cent of the visible minority population was born in Canada.

South Asians account for 684,070, followed by Chinese 486,325 and black 352,220.

Hindi in origin, desi literally means countryman and is used to refer to people and things that are of South Asian origin. If you belong to gen HipHop think of it as the South Asian equivalent of homeboy or homie. It's a derivation of the Hindi word desh which means country. Used between South Asians in much the same way that Italians refer to each other as paisans. It's a handy word because, when used colloquially, it crosses boundaries and groups various South Asian nationalities together.

Plagiarism Watch!

About the ideawallah

Gavin Barrett is Owner/Founding Partner + Chief Creative Officer, of award-winning Toronto agency Barrett and Welsh. In pursuit of big ideas he has: nibbled on pigs' ears (not on a live pig at the time); gone elephant-back in the Thai jungle (no elephants were hurt); gambled in a Macau casino (was utterly destroyed). His ads: have run in 35 countries, helped elect prime ministers, attracted the ire of the lawyers for Dolly the clone sheep, drawn an angry crowd in Lagos, have been studied in business texts in Canada and India and received derisive mention in a John Irving novel. His poems: can be found in Penguin’s anthology of 14 contemporary Indian poets, Reasons for Belonging. He cannot: sing.